Culbreath: When bullying goes incognito

It’s the strangest, saddest story to come out of professional sports in a long time: a professional football player leaves his team after suffering an emotional breakdown. The cause: a fellow teammate’s constant harassment, including threats and racial slurs. The fallout? The strangest collection of people taking both sides that I’ve ever seen outside of politics.

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Of course, I’m talking about the story of Jonathan Martin and Richie Incognito, both offensive linemen of the Miami Dolphins. Martin, a second-year player, has checked himself into a hospital to cope with “emotional distress”. What caused the distress hasn’t been released officially, but it’s been widely reported that he has been the target of sustained bullying by teammates, led by Incognito.

The story only gets stranger from there: reports of Miami coaches asking Incognito to “toughen [Martin] up”. Some veteran players tell reporters that Incognito just as much of a bastard as reported. Others defend him — they say he’s a jokester, that’s his sense of humor, and he viewed Martin as a little brother. Some coaches wish Martin would have spoke up sooner, others think he should have handled it himself.

The story sounds horrific, because it absolutely is. It also sounds like it goes way deeper than anything we can even scratch on the surface. Why are players defending a guy who was videotaped storming around a restaurant with his shirt off and dropping n-bombs? Admittedly, I’m not, nor have I ever been an athlete. Is this a “keep it in the locker room” thing that players are now having to uncomfortably address in public? Or did Incognito honestly not realize that Martin didn’t understand his “brand of humor” (however brutish it might be), and is just as blindsided by the news of the second-year player’s breakdown as everyone else?

The statement I had made on the blog I write on wspd.com revolved around unchecked childhood bullying. Sure, there are efforts to fight it, but sometimes low-level teasing gets brushed aside as “boys being boys”. But as I stewed over it as the story developed, this sounds like it could be a story out of any office building, only cranked up to eleven. The new guy in the office seems quiet and distant, and now the loud guy is always on him. Is he trying to motivate him? Or is he harassing him? Is he misunderstood? Or is he disturbed? It’s not often that a victim on that side is going to have the extreme reaction that Martin had, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility for the guy to leave the office, or request a transfer. Nobody wants to be the snitch, but if you’re afraid of what could happen with your co-workers, someone needs to say something, right?

Very quietly this week, another NFL player stepped away from his team: John Moffitt of the Denver Broncos quit football in two simple steps: he called the front office to let them know he wasn’t returning, and then went to Twitter to tell the fans: “Football was fun by my head hurts-haha kidding roger goodell. I’m on to new things, thanks to everyone along the way!!!” His reason: he decided he wasn’t having fun anymore, and there was no reason to put his health on the line for something he was no longer enjoying. He’s leaving about a million dollars on the table, but he’s looking forward to getting back to his family. Who knows if the locker room culture in Denver is anything like the culture we’re now hearing about in Miami. Or if Miami’s locker room is anything like what we’re hearing from Tampa Bay, where the players have just about tuned out head coach Greg Schiano’s “scream first, ask questions later” style of coaching.

Yes, a locker room is fueled by testosterone, run by people whose entire livelihoods depend on not only physical ability, but mental attributes such as aggressiveness, bordering on downright mean. Put your normal office personell situations in that hyperactive cocktail of hormones, and who knows what’s going to emerge? Very clearly, Incognito was overly aggressive with Thomas, but the real question is going to be how everyone reacts now that these facts are out in the open. And, more importantly, do either of these two players ever return to the game? It would take an act of valor for Jonathan Thomas to get back on the field. It would take the ultimate act of contrition for me to even consider Richie Incognito wearing a uniform again.

Local man named one of ‘boldest fans’

Toledoan Griffin Van Nest enjoys playing hockey in his free time, but he is being enshrined among many football legends. Van Nest was one of five fans inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Feb. 5 as the boldest fans of the game.

“I’m on Cloud Nine,” he said. “I keep waking up in the middle of the night and can hardly sleep. It’s great. I’m blown away. I’m going into the Hall of Fame before Jason Taylor. That doesn’t seem right, but what are you going to do.”

Van Nest blogs regularly about the Miami Dolphins on the team’s website, ThePhinsiders.com. The Pro Football Hall of Fame contacted the website looking for the boldest fan in the game. Van Nest was nominated in a landslide.

He has been a Dolphins fan since 1971. In his work as a traveling therapist, he often leaves Ohio for Miami, sometimes without a job lined up, to catch games at SunLife Stadium in his pristine seats.

Griffin Van Nest

“I got invited to what they call the Deep End in SunLife Stadium,” he said. “It’s kind of the equivalent of the Dawg Pound in Cleveland. I sit in row one behind the goalpost. I got invited into this group because of some of my antics in previous games that they caught wind of.”

The antics that got Van Nest invited are commonplace at NFL games today, but he stood out from the crowd back then.

“What was the exception has now become the norm,” he said. “Ever since 1985 I started going to any Dolphins games around Toledo. I’d go to Buffalo, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Detroit. I would do face paint and put a costume on. In Cleveland, they don’t treat people from the opposing team too kindly. I rolled through Cleveland fully painted up. I made a costume. I took an old beige sports coat and spray painted it teal. I mohawked my hair and made that teal.”

All it took were a few images of those costumes to earn an invitation to the Deep End.

“The fanatics in Miami put up a post asking how crazy would you be to get free tickets to a football game,” Van Nest said. “I had all kinds of pictures. I forwarded some to them, like me walking around Buffalo dressed up as Gene Simmons from KISS with teal eyes and an orange rock hair wig. They private messaged me back. They said, ‘Normally people are petitioning us to get in the section, but we’re recruiting you. If you’re in Florida, we want you to be part of our group.’”

Van Nest is also part of a group of Dolphins fans in Toledo that meets at Pat & Dandy’s. One of the members ended up in his wedding, where his wife surprised him with a Miami Dolphins ice sculpture.

“She loves going to the games,” Van Nest said. “Prior to meeting me, she wasn’t much of a football fan. She supports me and she enjoys going. We have a great time. She goes into the Deep End and puts on costumes with an orange wig and designs painted on her face. She buys into it.”

Van Nest’s love for dolphins started early, the animal before progressing to the NFL team.

“When I was 5, my grandparents took me to Florida,” he said. “We stopped in the Daytona Beach area and they took me to Marine Land, and we saw a dolphin show. That left a lasting impression on me.”

He went to his first game in 1985 when the Dolphins played in Detroit. His mother rented a motorhome and took a big group to the game.

“That was when Marino was just coming into his own,” Van Nest said. “The Dolphins lost the game, but it left such an impression on me that I knew I loved going to the games.”

In 2010, Van Nest participated in the inaugural Dolphins Cycling Challenge. He rode 170 miles on a bicycle in two days, and far exceeded his quota of $750 by raising $3,200 for the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center.

“The majority of the money came from strangers who read my stories on the blog,” he said. “I was humbled by that.”

For his dedication, Van Nest received a trip to Indianapolis on Super Bowl weekend and was honored with an authentic bronze bust at a ceremony on Super Bowl Sunday at O’Reiley’s Irish Bar. The bust will be on display in Guinness’ wing of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

“I’d like to thank Guinness and the Pro Football Hall of Fame for this honor. I can’t thank them enough. I’m a pretty excitable guy, and they’ve taken me to a new level.”